by Tim Stead
“Yes, Prince Havil. He may be able to shed light upon your assassins.”
The king issued instructions, and the officer in question was summoned. He arrived, dressed in cottons and soft boots, but despite his comfortable attire he was clearly a soldier, straight backed, strong, incurious eyes. He stood rigidly before his king.
“Pagelian,” the king said. “This is Wolf Narak. He has some questions for you concerning the attack on our patrol. You will answer him as best you can.”
Pagelian nodded. “Yes, my king,” he said, allowing himself a brief, appraising glance at Narak.
“How were most of the men killed? Arrows?”
“Yes, Deus. It appears that a killing ground was set up, infantry to block an escape and archers to kill most of the men. It was clear from the wounds and the terrain.”
“And I take it that you found no arrows?”
“No Deus. They took them all. It makes sense to reuse arrows if you can.”
“Even the broken ones?”
“Deus?”
“When you shoot men they fall. When they fall some arrows break. Did you find broken arrows?”
“No Deus. We found none.”
The king leaned forwards. “The flights would have told us something,” he said. “I see where you are driving with this.”
“Were any of the bodies of the slain men brought back from the border?”
“Several. Some were of noble birth. It is customary for families to have that right, and although it is thought proper for soldiers to lie where they fall, there are families with other traditions.” The king was curious. Havil was also keen to know where this was going.
“Are they as yet unburied?”
“Deus, they arrived from the border less than an hour ago with the captain here. They lie in the hall of honours, but their families will have been informed by now.”
“We must examine them at once,” Narak stood. The king and Havil hesitated, and then rose. Havil led the way past the guards down three flights of stairs and into a large chamber that was below ground. It had no windows, and was lit by many candles placed in niches along the walls. The banners of the hundred regiments of the Berashi army hung here, their bright blues, reds, yellows, and greens speaking of a glory that was to be found elsewhere. Here there were only the dead. Five biers were set out in the hall, and on each was the figure of a man draped in the colours of his regiment, five identical flags.
Looking at the bodies Havil burned with indignation. He was not inclined to accept defeat in any form. He itched to be there, in the border lands, sword in hand and a good horse beneath him, answering blood with blood.
Narak lifted the flag over the first body, removed it completely and gave it to one of the guards to hold. This was an older man, grey creeping through his short, tightly curled hair. An old scar traced the edge of his jaw.
“Killed by a sword,” Narak said. “See, here.” He pointed to the wound. One of the guards turned away. Narak picked up the man as though he were no more than a dry stick of wood and laid him face down, spent a few moments examining his back. “No wounds. This man did not fall to an arrow.”
He turned the man over so that his closed eyes looked again at the ceiling, arranged his limbs carefully, even gently, and draped him once again in the flag. He moved to the next bier. The second man was younger, little more than a boy. His face was smooth and perfect in the stillness of death. He had been quite beautiful, but now he had the colour of ash and cloudy skies. Narak looked at him, pausing for a moment. Havil saw the wolf god shake his head. What a waste. He examined the clothes, found nothing, and turned the boy over.
There were three marks on his back, places where the clothing was rent and the cloth stained with blood, one on the buttock and two higher on the back – the ones that had killed him. Narak forced his fingers through the cloth, pushed them down into the wounds one by one. He was disappointed. The boy was turned over again and covered with the flag.
The third body was also a young man, but a warrior in his prime. He had been struck by at least five arrows in his chest and belly, and Narak again probed each wound. He turned the man over and found that his back was unmarked. He was about to cover him again when he stopped and lifted the dead man’s arm. There was another wound high up on the side, close to the armpit. The fingers went in, and almost at once Narak smiled. He seized something and pulled. His hand came away with an unpleasant noise and he held up an arrow head, clogged with clotted blood and flesh.
“Now we shall learn something,” he said. “Bring me light, and cloth.”
The king’s men ran to obey, and in a short time Narak was surrounded by lights as he carefully cleaned the point he had found. At last he was satisfied and held it up for all to see. The arrowhead was triangular, cutting back in at the base to give it a slight barb. It was new minted and smooth, and as far as Havil could tell it was a typical Avilian arrowhead.
“Avilian,” he said.
Narak seemed disappointed and relieved at the same time. Even to Havil, a man well aware of his own shortcomings in terms of sensitivity to the moods of others, it was clear that he had been expecting something else.
“Yes, Avilian.” He handed the point to the king who studied it. “I am still quite certain that Duke Elyas has no hand in this, King Raffin. Send your men to the border, take prisoners, and I would be grateful if you will tell me what you find.”
“How, Deus?” Havil asked.
“I will leave a wolf with you. In the hour before sunset it will be my eyes and ears. Speak to it and I will hear.”
“You will stay for a banquet in your honour, Deus?” the king asked.
“I regret that I cannot, King Raffin. There are urgent matters that I must attend to. You will forgive the slight?”
“Deus, it has been an honour to be visited thus,” the king said, but it was only words. Havil sensed that his father was glad to see the wolf god go, and go he did, almost at once he strode out of the chamber and left them with the dead.
“What do you suppose he expected to find?” the king asked.
9. Benafelas
Pascha Lammeling sat by the window and looked out over the small town of Benafelas. The window was on the seaward side of the house, giving her the most beautiful view, the sweep of the docks, the brightly painted boats tied to their moorings in the bay, the smooth curve of the cliffs beyond. The fish sheds were an eyesore it was true, but she forgave them because she liked fish, and the cry of the gulls, the smell of the sea reminded her of happier times.
They reminded her of Alaran.
She had first seen this view a thousand years before, and like a favourite morsel she had been saving it for a time when she felt low, when she needed to see something joyous that told her life was worth living.
Pascha, Passerina, The Lady of Sparrows, was a god. She denied it, to others and to herself. She rejected the Benetheon, refused to use her gifts, and yet she did not age, did not tire. She hid her true nature, and so she must move from place to place, from kingdom to kingdom before people began to remark how little she aged through the years.
Another two summers and she must bid farewell to the pretty boats and the warm winds of Benafelas. She would move east again, to Berash. There was a little town there where she owned property, a warm house with two hundred acres of woodland and a carefully constructed myth that it was owned by a wealthy widow of Telas, soon expected to die. She would become her own niece, a young woman entering into her inheritance, and in ten years or so she would move on yet again, and become a Berashi heiress with private means moving to her new house in Afael.
Beyond the bay she could see the line of clouds vanishing into the south. They marked the presence of the Green Isles. The Telans named them the Isles of Mystery and they were a mystery to Pascha, too. She had never been there, never sailed the hot seas or tasted the exotic fruits fresh from the trees. It was not a place for someone with pale skin and red hair who wanted to hide.
She stood and walked across the room to where her maidservant Teean had left a silver tray of cool drink and chopped cheese and fruit, and as she walked she caught her reflection in the mirror, stopped and looked.
Some men thought her beautiful, she knew. In the privacy of her own room within her own house she allowed her hair the freedom she denied it elsewhere. It was orange, or closer to orange than red, and it fell in lazy curls to her waist, pinned back by a silver and emerald clip above one ear. Her skin was pale, almost chalk white, with a hint of the blue veins that ran beneath. Freckles decorated her nose and cheeks, a nose that she considered too broad. Her green eyes, flecked with brown, were slightly too wide spaced, and her mouth a little too wide, lips a fraction too thick.
She was of ancient plains stock, her parents had told her. The pale skin and red hair were from a time before Pelion, before the Benetheon which had divided the world into men and beasts, and she was part of that Benetheon, lady of the sparrows, Passerina of a thousand eyes.
Pascha didn’t like sparrows. Their small, focussed minds terrified her, diminished her in a way that the others could not know. She hated her gift, but loved without reservation the status it had given her. In a single year she had gone from a Telan shopkeeper’s daughter to a god, a queen, a person of power and influence.
At first she had been afraid of the high born, that they would see her as nothing more than a shop girl, a creature from the low side of Telas Alt, and she had sought the company of the others like herself, the raised up.
Eventually she been drawn to Narak and become his lover. He was a gentle man, considerate, honest. He was everything that her mother had told her to look for in a husband, and for a while she had been quite happy in that vicarious satisfaction.
She had lost her fear of kings and princes. She was a god. She saw them grow old and die. She saw their children and grandchildren grey and fade until they became no more than the seasons passing, and she could ask Narak who was king in Avilian, and he would reply that he thought is was one man, but perhaps he had died and he could not recall the son’s name.
Yet she had grown impatient with Narak. He was always speaking of the forest, of the wolves that he loved so much. She in her turn hankered after fine clothes, jewels and men to admire them. She saw other men, it was true, but they were like Narak, or they were servants. The only one that flattered her at all was Remard.
She relished their visits, infrequent as they were, to the courts of the southern kingdoms. She loved to dance with the beautifully dressed men, to listen to the pretty words they said.
In the end they argued. Pascha wanted the genteel life. She did not care for sparrows, or for wolves or even the great forest. Wolfguard was a den for animals, a pit of darkness, and she had no place of her own. She left.
She went to Afael. It was the kingdom furthest from the forest and Wolfguard. She was well received. Admirers showered her with gifts. She became wealthy, bought land, built a house, and when she grew tired of them, when they started to age she went to Avilian.
For a hundred years she flitted from court to court, kingdom to kingdom along the southern coast.
And then she met Alaran, beautiful Alaran, fresh crowned king of Afael.
Alaran was perfect. He was everything that Narak had not been. He was everything that she admired in the men of the south. His skin was the colour of burnt honey, his hair a bright and improbable blond like the sun. His eyes were the blue of the ocean, and when he smiled his whole face embraced his joy. He was the finest looking man she had ever seen. Yet there was more. He sang with a voice that silenced the birds in awe. He wrote music and poems of surpassing beauty, and he was the only man she had ever met who danced as well as she.
So began their ill fated affair. For the first years it seemed wonderful. It was one long dance, an eternal song in Alaran’s beautiful voice. But Alaran was mortal, and like all the princes and kings before him he had begun to fade, to age into that infinite succession of royal autumns. She could not bear it.
She broke the first rule of the Benetheon. She bestowed her favour on Alaran, made him immortal by her will.
If it salved her troubled heart it did little for the court of Afael. At any such gathering of the powerful there is always an undercurrent of ambition, a river of politics that surrounds the established kings, princes, dukes, a river that erodes them on one side and builds them up on the other. Royal houses weaken and fall, and there are always contenders waiting to sit on a vacated throne.
They had been delighted with Pascha at first. She was of the Benetheon, and the one thing they all knew about Pelion’s gods was that they could not have children. There would be no demi-gods, no descendents. There would be no heir to the throne of Afael. All the great families of the kingdom agreed that this was a fine thing. They encouraged Alaran and sang her praises.
An immortal king was a different thing. It was a nightmare. What Pascha perceived as dissatisfaction quickly grew into intrigues, plots, and a sickness of hatred gripped the entire court with her as its focus.
They tried to kill Alaran. They failed. Executions followed, and so did Narak.
He came to her on behalf of the Benetheon, he said. He came because of rumours that she had broken their first law, and he came because he did not believe that it was so. He asked her to swear it, and it would be enough, he would go and tell the others that they were wrong.
She refused to swear, would not deny it.
She still remembered the look on his face and the way it changed. Shock fading into disappointment. They had talked for hours after that, but the moment that he knew, that he became certain that she was extending Alaran’s life, was the moment that she remembered. It stayed with her even more than her rejection of the Benetheon, her self excommunication from her own kind.
When Narak had left she had wept, some part of her knowing what she had lost, and another part rejoicing that she was free to pursue her love with Alaran, that the others of the Benetheon would not intervene. She felt the doom then, the sour taste. She knew that what lay between her and Alaran would eventually tear them apart because she could not balance the profit with the loss. She pushed the knowledge away and buried it beneath her love. But in the end their private doom was overtaken by a greater evil.
Seth Yarra came.
They sailed out of the east. Two ships; tall and dark, clouded with more sails that anything ever seen in Afael, and they were fast. None of Afael’s sailors could even offer an opinion as to their origin. The ships anchored in the bay below the city and boats came ashore, churning the harbour waters with disciplined oars. Dozens of people stood and stared as they drew up by an empty boat ramp and a tall man dressed all in black stepped out of the small boat and surveyed them. Pascha had not been there, but she was told that he seemed stern, as though his face was incapable of expressing joy. He had mounted the ramp until he was eye to eye with the crowd and then he had greeted them in the name of Seth Yarra. It was the first time those dreadful words had been spoken on the soil of Terras.
These uneasy memories gave way to tragic ones. The man in black and his followers were cold and intolerant, but Alaran was weak, opposed by the majority of his own nobility, and he welcomed them as a possible ally. He gave them land and permits to build as they liked. One of the ships left, came back with ten more, and for the first time the black and green banners were seen. Hundreds of men swarmed in the camps around them, a nest of insects.
It was all predictable, now that it had happened. Like looking at a straight line and wondering how you could ever have thought it a curve while it was being drawn. The Seth Yarra did not deviate from their course. Hundreds turned into thousands. The nobles withdrew from the city and gathered in the north. They feared these new men, and so did Pascha.
She asked for help from the only people she really knew, the Benetheon, but they denied her. It was a ploy, they suggested, to keep her lover in power. She had expected more, expected them to be wiser than her, to s
ee the truth. But it was Wolf Narak that came. Grey shadows were seen in the hunting estates around the town, pacing silently through the forested hills that overlooked the Seth Yarra encampments. A man with two swords was seen in the taverns.
He did not come to Pascha, but he was all around her.
Of all the Benetheon it was Narak who saw value in her word, Narak who was wise.
Then the war came. A great army marched out of the west. Soldiers of Avilian, Berash, Telas, allied with the rebel Afael lords, led by Remard and Narak. But Seth Yarra had grown to tens of thousands, and all hardened troops.
Yet the invaders had lost. Again and again they lost, withdrew, lost again. Their numbers diminished with each battle and the dark ships could not bring replacements fast enough. Everyone said that it was Fox Remard who led them to victory, but Pascha knew better. Remard was clever, but he was no genius, and such strategy was beyond him. Foxes hunt alone, and she could detect the scent of the pack in each victory. Remard was doing what he had always done, following Narak by staying just ahead of him. She had watched the fox do it for a hundred years, and so clever was he that even Narak thought himself outshone. Narak was a simple man, direct and honest, and he liked other simple men, men who lacked politics and diplomacy, and this is what Remard pretended to be.
